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Thursday, August 29, 2013

U. S. PIRG has followed up on their report earlier this year
on the end of the “Driving Boom” with a significant new piece, “Moving Off the
Road,” which goes straight at the key question: is the national falloff in VMT
just a result of the lousy economy?

The short answer is: No, it doesn’t appear to be.(My comments and intro to the earlier
report, “A New Direction: Our Changing Relationship with Driving and the
Implications for America’s Future,” here, the new report here.)

The study sifts through state-by-state data on unemployment
and other economic metrics and compares them with VMT data and basically finds
no correlation.(By the way, there
isn’t much correlation with other economic and demographic factors either,
leaving the differences in state VMT changes still somewhat mysterious.)

The basic facts are that per capita VMT is down – and down
significantly – almost everywhere, except in a few outliers like North Dakota,
which is experiencing an oil boom.And that VMT drop has now been observed for some time.In fact, per capita VMT has been going
down for eight street years.

“Moving Off the Road” notes several other reasons for
doubting that the decline in driving is just a result of the current economic
slump: (1) Per capita driving had already begun to decline before the recession
and has continued going down during the recovery, (2) other metrics of
“motorization,” such as vehicles per household, have shown the same peak-and-decline
pattern, (3) driving has declined among both the employed and the unemployed,
and (4) the ups and downs of gross domestic product no longer track with the
ups and downs of VMT.

In short, the case is beginning to look more and more
compelling that driving patterns have made a dramatic and long-lasting shift
over the past several years.

And of course this isn’t just an academic question.As “Moving Off the Road” concludes, “Accepting
that the Driving Boom has ended presents an enormous opportunity.Our transportation system remains
oriented to the goals of the 1950s, focused on creating new highways and
expanded mobility for a new era of expanding automobile ownership.To the extent that driving rates no
longer climb, it makes it easier for America to shift priorities.”

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The British Columbia carbon tax is now five years old, and a
new academic study from the University of Ottawa (link here) provides pretty persuasive evidence that it’s
working!BC’s use of fossil fuels
has dropped much more rapidly than that of any other province, while its
economy (in GDP per capita) is holding its own.In fact, because the carbon tax is offset against other
taxes, BC has the lowest income tax in Canada.

This objective evidence of success is corroborated by a much
more subjective indicator: provincial politics.As I pointed out in a previous posting (here), the carbon
tax is notable for not becoming an
issue in the last general election.

As I have also suggested (here), the carbon tax should be
put on the table as a possible partial solution to future transportation
funding in this country.That’s a
different proposition from the revenue-neutral BC approach, but could have many
of the same benefits – not to mention raising much needed transportation
revenue.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

While Elon Musk’s Hyperloop has gotten all the buzz lately,
a much more obscure announcement may turn out to be a bigger deal.

MIT scientists have announced (link here) that they have
engineered a way to have 3-D printers make small pieces of composite materials
that lock together to form very large structures.(OK, I know this doesn’t sound exciting yet…be patient.)

So, as the press release notes, composite fiber materials
are light and strong and are ideal for building things like airplanes.But with current technology, the large
pieces (like airplane fuselage elements) need to be formed all at once to have
full structural integrity.Using
little interlocking bits, like kids’ building set pieces, you can make really
large pieces out of thousands of little ones.The MIT folks have figured out how to “lock” the little
pieces in a way that they have great structural stability in the desired
directions, but can be flexible in other desired directions and even
disassembled for repair.They are
now working on robotic production techniques to produce and link up the little
building blocks.

The MIT scientists suggest that aircraft construction is an
obvious application, but the idea could also work for bridges.

Bridges!And if
bridges, why not roads?

Imagine a “paving” machine consisting of a large-scale 3-D
printer ejecting and linking millions of composite “paving stones” along a
roadbed.

It’s now been 101 years since Edison put down his Concrete
Mile in Warren County, New Jersey, demonstrating the practicability of concrete
paving.Maybe it’s time for a “3-D
Printed Mile!”

Sunday, August 18, 2013

OK, not really close, but a recent visit to Secaucus
demonstrates that the Plaza at Harmon Meadow development (link here

) actually has
a very nice pedestrian scale to it.Even on a rainy day, people are out and about (although not so much at
the many sidewalk cafes).

I say “actually” because the Meadowlands area of northern
New Jersey is not famous for pedestrian-scale development.The whole idea of developing the
Meadowlands – an area previously best known for movie mobsters being murder,
buried, or both – has been continuously controversial in the state for
years.So it’s nice to see one
piece with good scale.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

OK, of course it’s Albany.Many commentators and critics over the past 40 years have
compared the Empire State Plaza with Brasilia and other “modernist” monumental
government developments – and with many of the same criticisms.

I’m sure nothing significant can be added to the record at
this point, but I have to say that on a recent visit I came away with the
observation that the Plaza (the surface portion – I didn’t go underground)
looks pretty good.The scale is
really decent and the buildings, although too modernist for my taste, have
weathered decently.And of course
the longitudinal vistas – especially toward the Capitol – are beautiful.

My biggest negative takeaway is the lack of pedestrian
activity.A relatively sterile
environment looks even worse with only a few stragglers and workmen
around.(These shots were taken on
a beautiful weekday afternoon.)I
will note that a colleague reported much more activity at lunchtime, with a
small farmers’ market and people moving around.

My advice would be to (1) do something with the rather
scruffy monumental staircase to the state museum (which doesn’t actually offer
an entrance to the museum) and (2) splash some color of some sort on the “Egg,”
which is a theater with no posters, banners, marquees, or other markings.With no trappings of a theater it
rather gives the impression of being an anti-aircraft missile battery.

Albany has a long way to go, but the Empire State Plaza, if
given a thoughtful makeover, could be part of a better future.

Most of my readers will be familiar with the TRB
(Transportation Research Board) annual meeting in January in Washington, DC,
which brings together more than 10,000 transportation academics, agency
officials, consultants, and other transportation professionals to cram into
stuffy hotel meeting rooms to hear the latest research results and best
practices on a wide variety of topics.(We non-engineers often ask: How many research topics can possibly be
left regarding the properties of asphalt pavement?The answer: an endless number.)

More than 5,000 papers were submitted by the deadline for
the January 2014 conference.Papers
can be submitted on virtually any transportation topic, but many are submitted
in response to calls for papers from TRB subject area committees.These calls for papers suggest topics
that the leading lights in a particular specialty feel need urgent attention.

Below are some calls for papers I found on transportation
finance issues for the coming session:

·How to Creatively Stretch the Dollars We Have
Through Partnering and Process Management

·Doing More with Less: Improving Transportation
on a Shoestring Budget

Notice a common thread here?Something between despair and resignation concerning public
funding of transportation infrastructure?

I don’t know how many papers were submitted on these topics,
but I’m hoping someone has submitted a paper entitled: “How Lost Our Fortitude
as a Nation to Levy Gasoline Taxes to Fund Transportation Improvements, and How
We Can Get it Back.”